It is desirable for structural and other panels used in aerospace and other applications to be lightweight and provided with a protective and/or decorative laminate coating on their exterior surfaces to provide desired aesthetic, acoustic or other properties. For example, and without limitation, overhead stowage bins are generally composed of fiberglass panels that are provided with an appropriate shape and covered with a protective and/or decorative laminate, such covered panels then being assembled to form the bins. Each panel that makes up a particular structure may be separately fabricated with a laminate covering secured to the panel such that the laminate defines the exterior surface of the fabricated panel. While panel constructions of this type are known to be used in a wide variety of applications, including aerospace applications, the construction of such covered panels, and specifically the application of a laminate cover to the panel has long been an undesirably inefficient, and costly, requiring a high degree of manual labor to ensure that the laminate is properly attached to the panel and avoids undesired looseness, puckering, wrinkling or de-lamination.
Covered panels are typically fabricated by applying a laminate material across a front surface of the panel, such that the laminate material has flaps extending beyond the side edges of the panel, manually wrapping the flaps around the side edges of the panel, and adhesively securing the flaps to a back surface of the panel. The laminate material may be adhered directly to the front surface of the panel and then stretched and wrapped around the side edges of the panel for adhesive securement to the back surface of the panel. For example, contact cement may be used to adhere the laminate material to the front surface of the panel, which requires time for the contact cement to dry. The flaps are then heated and stretched by hand to wrap the flaps around the side edges, and hot-melt glue is manually applied to adhere the flap to the back surface of the panel. This has been a time consuming and therefore costly manual process, each panel taking approximately 15 minutes to fabricate, depending on the panel's size, with substantial manual manipulation of the panel during the process. Manual fabrication of such panels may also result in injuries to the fabricators, including burning and cutting their fingers and repetitive stress injuries, such as carpel tunnel syndrome.
Automated machines and processes for manufacturing covered panels and articles, including the wrapping of the panel's edges, are known. However, each has a problem in utilization that makes it relatively unattractive to use or requires a complex combination of parts in large factory machinery. There is therefore a need for a simplified, self-contained and portable apparatus and method for automated edge wrapping for a covered panel that improves cost- and time-efficiency as well as safety.